This is the second post in a series about conducting genealogical research in Germany. The earlier post is "German Genealogical Research", describing where records can be found.
Taking that first step to actually search for ancestors can be daunting. Therefore as an example, I'll walk through how research of my wife's German family began.
Step 1: Parent
My wife's mother, Gundela, moved from Germany to the US in 1958. We knew her mother's birth date and that she had been born in Hannover. A bit of searching turned up the website for Standesamt Hannover, with "Urkundenservice" partway down the page leading to an order form for:
- Geburtsurkunde Standardformat (birth record)
- Registerausdruck (copy of the birth register)
- Geburtsurkunde mit Geburtszeit (birth record with time of birth)
We ordered these in late 2020, at a cost of 10 Euros each / 30 Euros total. The three documents are shown below. Needless to say this was the only Geburtsurkunde mit Geburtszeit — the one with the stork — we ever ordered.
The Geburtsurkunde Standardformat gave us the full names of her parents Karl and Hedwig. However the Registerausdruck, a copy of the original handwritten register entry, brought even more information. We knew that Gundela had been adopted by Karl, and the Registerausdruck describes the adoption in the block of text in the right margin. It gave a date of December 14, 1940. In 1940, when Gundela was six, the Standesamt updated the record with a description of the adoption in the margin.
The German handwriting in the birth register uses what is now considered an obsolete cursive lettering called Kurrentschrift. After World War II, Kurrent was replaced by a more modern cursive lettering and then by typewriters. We were able to decode most Kurrent writing with some time and the lettering chart from Wikipedia, but more recently discovered Reddit's r/Kurrent with people happy to help with more difficult transcriptions.
Step 2: Grandparents
With a date and full names we next ordered the marriage record for Gundela's parents Karl and Hedwig from Standesamt Hannover, costing another 10 Euros. This was a case where the Standesamt did extra work to be helpful: 14 Dec 1940 was the date of adoption, but not the date of the marriage. The Standesamt located the marriage record a few months earlier, in May 1940, and sent it to us.
More Kurrentschrift! The first page of the marriage record contains the names, birthdates, and birthplaces of the bride and groom Hedwig and Karl. The lower half of the second page lists the parents of the bride and groom, my wife's great-grandparents, including their birthdates and places.
In the upper left margin of the first page is an update that the ehefrau (Hedwig) died in 1978 and giving the record number in Hannover. These updates are hit-or-miss: Karl died in 1993 but the marriage record was not annotated for his death.
Step 3: Maternal Great-grandparents
The marriage record of the grandparents supplied the birthdate and birthplace for the great-grandparents, allowing us to order the next set of records. The maternal great-grandparents were born in the 1880s. Their records had originally been recorded at Standesamt Obernkirchen, but records that old are moved to Landesarchiv Bückeburg.
We've yet to find an archive with a web order form like many Standesamt use, but every archive has accepted requests through email. DeepL is very helpful in composing an email request. The practices vary substantially from one archive to another:
- Some are happy to send PDFs in email, others always send paper copies as part of their processing.
- Some will send the documents along with an invoice, trusting that it will be paid, others require payment in advance.
The invoice for an Archiv usually requires an electronic transfer to a bank account, none so far have been able to accept a credit card. We use Wise to send a SEPA transfer, an electronic check in Euros, for just a few cents in fees.
Great grandmother Minna's birth record had a note in the left margin which told quite a story: her birth had been out of wedlock, a big deal in the very Lutheran 19th century Germany. The biological father later legitimized the child by marrying the mother and updating the birth record of the child to use his own family name.
Step 4: Paternal Great-grandparents
The paternal grandparents were older, born before 1874 and pre-dating civil recordkeeping at Standesämter. Their birth records were in church books. This was our first venture with Archion, which holds digitized Lutheran and Evangelical Church books from much of Germany. We paid about 20 Euros for one month of access, using a credit card.
Church books can be kept for each type of record or held as sections in one book:
- Taufbuch: baptism records
- Bestattungen or Beerdigungen: burial records
- Trauungen: marriage records
- Kirchenbuch: one large book with sections for each type of record
The place of birth from the marriage record led to the correct Church book to look in, and then look for the birthdate.
95. November, der 27.- Mevert, Carl Heinrich, ehelichen Sohn des Friedrich
Wilhelm Mevert von Nr 1 in Beeke, und seiner ehefrau
Sophia Luisa geb. Heshe von Nr 10 in Luhnde geboren
der sechzehnten der November.
It is totally possible to research one's own family genealogy, it is not necessary to pay someone else to do it. It only takes a bit of time and small amounts of money.